While neon lighting has been available in various forms for some sixty years, its use for general lighting has greatly increased during the last several decades. However, conventional neon lighting has involved tubes of standard finite lengths, the ends of which have been provided with plugs for electrical contacts to be fitted into plug receptacles disposed in standard size housings adapted for attachment to walls or ceilings. An example of such tubing and fixed housing is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,569,004, issued Feb. 4, 1986.
More recently, custom designed neon tubing has been fabricated to provide lighting in areas in which it is not either practical or desirable to utilize standard housings with fixedly disposed plug receptacles. In situations where it is desired to provide decorative or special neon lighting or lighting in unusual shaped areas, neon tubing generally consists of tubes designed for such areas. Neon tubes of this nature have heretofore been mounted on a wall or ceiling surface by means of clip type plastic elements secured to the wall or ceiling surface and projecting thereform. In addition, mountings may be accomplished by means of glass posts designed to be projected through an orifice in the wall with an electrical conduit extending behind the wall ultimately to the exciting transformer. Where it is not practical to place the electrical conduits behind the wall, it has heretofore been necessary to string them along the wall to extend between the electrode of one tube and that of another tube, or between at least one electrode of such tube and the exciting transformer. Neon tube installations thus made may not only be unsafe, but they are quite unsightly. However, devising and making housing for tube electrodes and conduits for custom installations has heretofore been quite expensive and time consuming.
In general, then, the mounting of custom neon tubing on wall or ceiling surfaces has left much to be desired from the standpoints of appearance, safety and cost.